


In Red Silence

by Catsnake



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Batarians, Turians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-09
Updated: 2016-09-09
Packaged: 2018-08-14 00:12:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7991479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catsnake/pseuds/Catsnake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While exploring distant worlds, you might stumble across Maji, a non-remarkable planet, and you might land to check it out. You might find an anomaly on your map, and traverse the desolate red landscape, wind howling around you, to find evidence of a violent history...</p>
<p>(This story is inspired by the "Odd Skull" you can find on Maji and the in-game codex remarks about the planet)</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Red Silence

**Author's Note:**

> If you find and examine the Odd Skull buried in the dust on Maji:
> 
> “This massive skull is scored by deflected mass accelerator shots. The xenobiology files in your hardsuit computer can't identify the species. It must have been brought here from an unknown world.” 
> 
> When you view Maji from the Galaxy Map:
> 
> "Maji has a thin atmosphere of methane and carbon monoxide. The difference in temperature between the hemisphere facing the suns and that facing deep space causes constant wind, stirring the silica and sodium dust of the surface. Unsavory characters from the Terminus Systems occasionally use Maji for forms of cruel sport, dumping slaves, hostages, quarreling shipmates, or even (when bored) vicious animals on the surface. One must kill the other before they will be rescued from the lethal radiation of the giant stars."

It was the way the captain grinned when he rumbled “We’ve arrived” that Tacitus knew his fate was sealed.

 

He was still no adept at reading batarians—he’d never had the misfortune to spend much time with them before—but he’d been trapped aboard this ship, the name of which he did not know, for a period of time that was equally unknown to him. Weeks, months…time has no meaning to an animal, and that is what he had become, under ruthless Captain Kahan.

 

I used to be a CEO, Tacitus thought. I used to wake up in my luxury apartment, shower, wear a suit out as I walked to the rapid transit terminal. I used to eat imported meats and wines, I used to fuck beautiful consorts. The concept seemed surreal to him. That was a Tacitus Oran from another lifetime. The Tacitus who existed now had been born aboard this vessel, naked and starving, cramped in a crate too small for even the hateful varren his captors kept at their heels.

 

He was well past the point of imagining what had happened if he had never taken this business trip (he knew well would have happened: he would be at home, sipping his favorite vintage, watching something on his vidscreen, or maybe just staring out at his painting-esque view of the citadel presidium during its night-cycle); the thought was a raw wound that he now actively avoided touching. The fact was that he’d been captured, entirely unexpectedly, by these rogues hoping to use him as hostage.

 

He’d been ambushed unexpectedly returning to his hotel—whether it was planned or they saw the opportunity and seized it, he’d never know. They’d beaten him badly upon capture; he’d been dragged aboard, as a consequence, with no fight left him, trailing a rivulet of deep blue blood. They’d stripped him of all clothing and forced him into the crate. After healing considerably, he’d naturally begun to plot ways to escape. He knew they’d probably kill him before he actually escaped, but he didn’t fear death; his life, he figured, was probably effectively over as it was. He’d rushed a guard and bitten him badly when the guard had opened the crate to push in a water dish, and had been captured shortly after; Kahan had tied him to a console near the bridge, gathered as much crew as could reasonably leave their posts for an hour, and had publically flayed a number of scales from Tacitus’s chest. He’d been sobbing and incoherent by the time they had shoved him back into his crate. After that, he knew there were things worse than death to fear, and he had not attempted any form of insubordination since.

 

Now they had arrived at whatever destination Kahan had planned. Tacitus’s best hope was that they had ransomed him back to Apex Integrated Systems. He knew that it was equally likely they were trading him to slavers, or to rogue medical researchers in need of subjects, or to any number of possibilities from the dark places of the galaxy. Kahan himself opened the crate and reached in, grabbed Tacitus by the throat, and pulled him out sharply.

 

Tacitus lay sprawled on the floor. He blinked, slowly pulling himself up. Kahan was handing him armor and an empty gun. The armor was Turian, about his size. He did not question where they had taken it from. Armor: that was a good sign, he thought. A slave would not need armor. Nor did he think they would likely arm him before handing him over to be a piece of meat, for experiments or otherwise.

 

Tacitus dressed himself in the armor. Kahan and two of his crew led him into the shuttle bay. They boarded a shuttle. Tacitus noted the jeering crewmates they had passed. The shuttle left and began rapid descent toward a planet. Also a good sign.

 

“Welcome to Maji,” rumbled Kahan.

 

“I take it you’ll all three be accompanying me through the spaceport,” Tacitus said, his mind already starting to almost reluctantly reel with ideas about escape.

 

At that, the other two batarians had laughed near-hysterically while Kahan gave a deep smile.

 

“Here are the rules of Maji,” said Kahan. “First, Maji is uninhabitable. It has effectively no atmosphere. The winds are relentless, the air is poison, and the radiation will kill in a matter of hours.” The shuttle jolted slightly. They were nearing the drop zone. “You and your opponent will both be left there, and if you want to be taken back up, well, you have to kill your opponent.”

 

The shuttle door slid open, and Tacitus could hear the screaming wind through his helmet. Maji lay before him: dim, forbidding; a planet of darkness, windswept hills of lifeless brown dust, the red light of a looming dying star illuminating everything; around it, the black void of space. The star’s sibling, small, blue, and distant, hung above and near the great red star: a cosmic eye watching, unblinking, uncaring.

 

“In other words,” said Kahan, as he stood up from his seat, “if your opponent kills you, that’s it. If you try to run, you will die here. There is nowhere to go on this hell of a planet. If you win, we bring you back up safely. These are the rules of Maji.”

 

Kahan leaned in close, grabbed the collar of Tacitus’s armor: “But try not to die. Most of my men bet on you.” He gave Tacitus a sharp shove, and he was falling, backward, out of the shuttle. He landed hard on his back, but the fall had not been as far as he had expected. As he pulled himself up, he saw Kahan toss ammo clips from the closing doorway of the shuttle, and he followed them to retrieve them from the dust. Four rounds. That was all he got.

 

Gun loaded, he turned around and faced utter desolation. Some animal instinct of survival, long beaten into nonexistence during his time aboard the ship, began to rise again in his chest. He felt his blood pumping as he turned around, surveying the dim red land around him for his enemy. As he turned he saw nothing in the swirl of dust but the rapidly lights of the shuttle’s propulsion torches, and then they were gone. As alone as he seemed, he knew they were watching eagerly aboard the ship as it hovered at the edge of the planet’s gravity.

 

Unless they weren’t watching, he couldn’t stop himself from thinking. A small paranoid corner of his mind began to panic as he wondered if they had just left him here and were on their way to some form of civilization, laughing at him. But no, he steeled himself—what would be the point? Tacitus focused again on scanning his surroundings.

 

And then: he saw it.

 

So silently that at first he doubted his vision, it stalked forward, looking dead at him through the haze of windblown dust. Its tight skin was a dark color—in the dim red light it was impossible to know its true color. On this world, it was black. Its two eyes were round and pale; whether bioluminescent in their own right or whether they reflected light in a strange way, they appeared blank, bright white.

 

This thing was large, larger than the batarians’ vicious varren. It came up to the peak of Tacitus’s chest in standing height; if it walked on its hind legs bipedally instead, he knew it would be taller than he was. Its face, he could see now, was long, reptilian.

 

Tacitus had been preparing himself to fight another man or woman: human, turian, salarian, krogran, even—but not this. An animal. And not anything he had ever seen or even heard of before; though admittedly, some more detached part of himself was able to reason, he was no xenobiologist.

 

It opened its jaws just enough for him to see long black needle teeth contained in them, and through its semi-parted mouth came a keening cry: nothing close to the low growl or roar he expected, but a high wail that sounded unnervingly for a second or two like a human female or an asari screaming.

 

Tacitus gripped his gun, trembling slightly. It was prowling close now, and he had to watch its movements carefully. He had to guess when it would attempt to strike, and react immediately. He knew he would almost certainly not get more than one chance to fire. He was starting to feel light-headed—how long had he been down here already? But he could not let himself focus on that yet.

 

Perhaps that was where he had the advantage: with his breather helmet and armor, he was possibly more shielded from the deadly environment than his foe. It was impossible for him to know if the thing was feeling the effects of poisoning or radiation; it circled him slowly, in silence now.

 

Tacitus felt as though no matter how much he breathed in, he couldn’t fill his lungs. The lightheadedness grew worse. He knew this needed to end soon, or he would die anyway.

 

Fuck it, he thought, and raised his gun.

 

The animal reacted to his sudden motion and darted silently forward, needle teeth bared, and Tacitus responded instantly, firing before his mind even realized he was firing. With a grunt, the creature collapsed a foot away from him. He saw that the shot had caught in the shoulder, and it twisted on the ground, writhing with a piteous shriek.

 

Without further hesitation, he fired three shots into its head, and it quickly grew still. He looked around at the sky, swaying slightly on his feet. They would soon be back. Perhaps they would be worth even more to him now that he had won a match. He wondered what group the animal had belonged to, if it had been a rival group of mercenaries and not Kahan’s crew. One thing seemed certain: they no longer valued him as a hostage, clearly. Maybe they’d offered a ransom and Apex Integrated Systems had rejected it—the reason didn’t matter.

 

What mattered was that looking around him, at the desolation and the now-growing faint blue lights of the returning shuttle, he saw his future clearly, and he made a decision: he ran.

 

His legs felt like lead, but he pushed himself. He knew that behind him the shuttle was burning closer. His head felt detached, like he was beginning to float away. Somewhere behind him, the shuttle had either landed or turned around, but they weren’t following him. They likely didn’t find pursuing him to be worth their own exposure to the planet’s surface. He didn’t care whether they tried to chase him or not, he had made up his mind. He was not returning to that ship, that crate, ever again.

 

Tacitus collapsed in the dust, retching and vomiting only little, as there was little in his stomach to give up. He dragged himself forward and tried to summon the strength to stand and gave up. He rolled onto his back and gazed up at the sky.

 

He could see the black emptiness of space, and the lights of innumerable stars, some of which were home to populated solar systems. All that was distant here. The wind rushed over him, carrying dust. That was all he could hear. That was all there was.

 

And a growing silence.

 

 

 

 


End file.
